I
am interested in the link between art, science, and technology, how the
eyes and brain prioritize, and reality as a subjective experience vs.
an absolute truth. As a visual artist, I cannot think of a topic more
stimulating and yet so basic, than the act of seeing--how the human brain
makes sense of the visual world. -- Devorah Sperber

After
Renoir, 2006

Based
on A Girl With a Watering Can, (1876) by Pierre-Auguste RenoirNational Gallery of Art, Washington DC

At
first glance, the installations appear to be a random arrangement of spools
of thread. Clear acrylic spheres placed in front of the works, shrink
and condense the thread spool "pixels" into recognizable images while
also rotating the imagery 180 degrees like the human eye. This shift in
perception functions as a dramatic mechanism to present the idea that
there is no one truth or reality, emphasizing subjective reality vs. an
absolute truth.

After
Renoir is one of six thread spool works which are based on the centered-eye
phenomenon in historical portraits. The other five works are based on portraits
by da Vinci, Vermeer, Picasso, Rembrandt, & Van Eyck. This concept was inspired
by a recent scientific survey by Christopher Tyler of 3/4 view portraits
over the past two millennia which revealed that one eye tended to be placed
symmetrically at or near the vertical axis of the canvas throughout the
history or Western portraiture. While Renoir's A Girl With a Watering
Can did not meet the criteria of Tyler's study (he only surveyed portaits
from the waist up), the symmetry, soft focus, and color scheme compelled
me to select it as a subject matter.

Digital
Rendering: Five eye-centered portraits (as seen in viewing sphere), Medium:
thousands of spools of thread (not seen in digital rendering)

Artist
Statement

My
current body of work consists of sculptures assembled from thousands
of ordinary objects -spools of thread, marker-pen caps, map tacks, or
chenille stems, combined with optical devices such as clear acrylic
viewing spheres, convex mirrors, or reversed binoculars. While many
contemporary artists utilize digital technology to create high-tech
works, I strive to "dumb-down" technology by utilizing mundane materials
and low-tech, labor-intensive assembly processes. I place equal emphasis
on the whole recognizable image and how the individual parts function
as abstract elements, selecting materials based on aesthetic and functional
characteristics as well as for their capacity for a compelling and often
contrasting relationship with the subject matter.

My
interest in the biology of vision grew from my desire to understand
how viewers experience my work. The six eye-centered portraits illustrate
specific visual experiences related to the biology of vision such as:
how the human eyes and brain process sensory data-- Photons bouncing
off the spools of thread reach our eyes where they are turned into a
pattern that is sent to the primary visual cortex where the rough shapes
are recognized. The pattern is then sent to higher regions where colors
are recognized and where thread spool identities are encoded along with
other knowledge we already has about thread spools. This direction of
flow is called: feed forward, meaning the data is moving from bottom
to top (eyes to brain).

Bundles
of nerve cells carry information. Traffic flowing from top to bottom
is called feedback or top-down processing. There are 10 times as many
nerve fibers carrying information down as there are carrying it up.
So what we see is based on what neuroscientists call "top down processing."
And what we see depends on the framework built by past experience that
interprets raw data.

When
the top (or brain) is convinced it knows what it is seeing (in this
case, initially fixating on what appears to be a random arrangement
of thread spools), the bottom level of data (the recognizable portrait)
is overruled. This may explain why my use of thread spools create such
a jolt or 'WOW" experience when the viewer finally sees the representation
imagery in the viewing sphere, as the brain abruptly shifts focus from
the individual spools to the whole recognizable image.

The
brain can only hold or assemble one image at a time, so its initial
fixation on the individual spools does not allow the recognizable portrait
to emerge until the thread spools are seen through the viewing sphere
or from a significant distance. However, once the viewer "sees" the
image in the thread, the brain can shift back and forth from focusing
on the individual spools to the whole recognizable image. And once the
viewer "knows" the image is visible in the thread, he or she can not
erase it. Thus, these works function as neurological primers, literally
priming or teaching the brain to make sense of visual imagery it has
not yet been exposed to.

Overall,
the eye-centered portraits exemplify my interest in visual perception,
the link between art, science, and technology, repetitive processes,
truth of materials, the feminist art proposition of bringing genres
into "high art," and the scientific systems theory which focuses on
the whole as well as its part to gain understanding. - Devorah Sperber,
2006

*Partial
funding by Coats and Clark

Devorah
Sperber is a New York-based artist whose sculptures, composed of thousands
of ordinary objects, negotiate a terrain between low and high tech. Her
labor-intensive works explore repetition and the effects of digital technology
on perception, scale, and subjective reality. -Patricia Phillips, Executive
Editor, Art Journal